1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a data-generation supporting system, a data-generation supporting apparatus, and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a catalog such as a paper medium or a PDF file in which specifications of many industrial products or parts (instances) are described, property values of the parts slightly differ from one another (for example, thermometers slightly differ in measurement temperature range from one another). In the catalog, combinations of the property values are described in a matrix form so that product or part codes for identifying the respective products or parts (instances) are uniquely assigned to the products or parts according to each of the combinations.
Furthermore, the combinations in the matrix form are often stored as they are and expanded when the combinations are displayed toward a user.
Meanwhile, if it is necessary to add accessory information (e.g., a term of validity) to each of the combinations, it is preferable to do so after the combinations in the matrix form are expanded, and to store the expanded combinations, to which the accessory information is added, in a contents database. However, a data amount of the expanded combinations becomes considerably large, disadvantageously resulting in heavy burden on a user (data-generation person). Furthermore, if the combinations in the matrix form are expanded, nonexistent combinations (exceptions) are often present. In addition, a method of assigning the product or program codes to the respective products or program differs among industries or companies. Due to this, it is disadvantageously necessary to perform operation exceeding simple combinations in the matrix form.
To solve the problems, a method of generating data by using a description rule of “If . . . then . . . else . . . ” is proposed as disclosed in, for example, JP-A 2000-222457.
However, if exceptions are removed using the description rule of “If . . . then . . . else . . . ”, product codes are generated, and contents data is finally generated, it is disadvantageously necessary for the user to acquire skill in the description rule.
Moreover, to expand the existent description rule, it is disadvantageously required to verify combinations of description rules.